Reducing electricity usage provides the benefits, among others, of saving money by lowering payments to electric companies and also protecting the environment by reducing the amount of resources needed to generate the electricity. Electricity users, such as consumers, businesses, and other entities, may thus desire to reduce their electrical usage to achieve these benefits. Users may be able to more effectively reduce their electricity usage if they have information about what devices (e.g., refrigerator, oven, dishwasher, furnace, and light bulbs) in their homes and buildings are using the most electricity and what actions are available to reduce electricity usage.
Electricity monitors for individual devices are available for measuring the electricity usage of a single device. For example, a device can be plugged into an electricity monitor, and the monitor can in turn be plugged into a wall outlet. These monitors can provide information about electricity usage for the one device they are attached to, but it may not be practical to monitor all or even many devices in a house or building with these monitors, because it would require a large number of devices that can be expensive and also require significant manual effort to install.
Instead of an electricity monitor for a single device, an electricity monitor can be installed at an electrical panel to obtain information about electricity used by many devices simultaneously. An electricity monitor on an electrical panel is more convenient because a single monitor can provide aggregate usage information about many devices. It is more difficult, however, to extract more specific information about usage of electricity by a single device, since the monitor typically measures one signal (or several signals for different zones of the house or building) that reflects the collective operation of many devices, which may overlap in complex ways. The process of obtaining information about the electricity usage of a single device from an electrical signal corresponding to usage by many devices may be referred to as disaggregation.
To provide the greatest benefits to end users, a need exists for more accurate disaggregation techniques, so that end users receive accurate information about the electrical usage of individual devices. A need also exists for faster disaggregation techniques, so that end users and others can receive information about electrical usage in real time.